Christy Hovanetz, Ph.D., is a Senior Policy Fellow for ExcelinEd focusing on school accountability and math policies.
Today’s post celebrates everyone’s favorite obscure holiday: International Tongue Twister Day.*
She sells sea shells by the sea shore.
Think that’s tough? Try talking through this treacherous tongue twister ten times: Pad kid poured curd pulled cod.
You tried it, didn’t you…?
When we hear tongue twisters, we immediately want to check whether we can repeat it correctly. Albeit, agonizing about achieving an auspicious attempt. Give it a shot!
A team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that this is the most difficult tongue twister in the world. The brain coordinates its articulation of words according to which muscles it needs to move, not by what the resultant phonemes sound like. Sounds that use the same or similar muscles can confuse the brain. Participants in the study typically failed to repeat all the words or just stopped talking all together.
Tongue twisters are funny, but they are a great way to practice and improve pronunciation and fluency to speak clearly. Tongue twisters provide a plethora of payoffs including, strengthening and stretching the muscles involved in speech, understanding the difference in different sounds, highlighting the hardest sounds for you, improving articulation, learning about homophones and exposure to new words. Teasing tots, ‘tweens, teens and teammates with tongue twisters will assist in learning a language skill in disguise!
Some of our favorite tongue twisters come from, Fox in Socks, the classic Dr. Seuss book by Theodor Geisel. For generations, Geisel has inspired readers through clever rhythms, rhymes and repetition. In fact, his book Cat in the Hat is considered as the gateway to the phonics-based approach in the U.S. Check out a blog of ours from earlier this year to learn more about the science of reading and the battle between phonics and whole-language pedagogy.
As kids we liked repeating these tongue twisters and had fun testing others and trying to catch them if they were wrong, but they are not just for kids. Tongue twisters are a great warm-up exercise before you make a presentation, speak in public, teach a class or lead a meeting!
Are you still trying to say Pad kid poured curd pulled cod? Check out some tips on how to learn tongue twisters.
*International Tongue Twister Day is always observed on the second Sunday in November.
